The bread o' the Irish

One of my favorite holidays of the year is fast approaching. Really, who doesn't love St. Patrick's Day? Let's drink some tasty stouts and listen to Celtic music. Sounds like a great plan to me.

In addition to some great beers and fast fiddlin', the rest of the world is lucky the Irish have shared another part of their culture: soda bread. I absolutely love Irish soda bread, especially when it's just out of the oven and you have some honey butter (or, separately, butter and honey) to put on it. So... tasty... *swoon*

I first posted this recipe way back in the summer of 2007, but thought I'd repost it in honor of the holiday. This recipe is adapted from the Moosewood Restaurant's Low-Fat Favorites cookbook and Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads.

Slainte!

Irish Soda Bread

1 1/2 c unbleached white flour
1 1/2 c whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 T packed brown sugar
4 T cold butter
1 egg
1 c buttermilk

Preheat oven to 375 deg. F. Lightly oil baking sheet. Mix dry ingredients. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender or using two knives.

In a separate bowl, mix wet ingredients. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, and pour the wet mixture into the well. Stir until evenly moist.

Turn onto lightly floured surface, kneading just a little. Mound on baking sheet into ~ 9" domed loaf. Lightly cut an X in the top with a sharp knife. Bake ~ 45 minutes.

Irished up, or my divine kitchen comedy

Some of my favorite times from childhood were spent listening to my grandpa sing Irish and American folksongs. Grandpa had the true Irish tenor, and a seemingly endless repertoire. Naturally we had our family favorites, one of which was a song we knew as "Clancy Lowered the Boom". It starts like this:

Oh, Clancy was a peaceful man, and you know what I mean -
the cops picked up the pieces, when Clancy left the scene...

Or in modern parlance, he opened a big ol' can o' whup-ass. The refrain began, "Whenever they got his Irish up, Clancy lowered the boom!" My family has always related well to this song. We're a pretty peaceable sort, but if you get our Irish up, you'd best be getting out of the way shortly thereafter or else prepare to feel the wrath.

In addition to our temper - and probably closely linked - we tend to have a generous (by which I mean excessive) streak of good old Irish stubbornness. I have often found, when taking on grand new baking or cooking experiments, that said stubbornness is possibly as valuable a kitchen amenity as, say, the fridge. Similarly taken for granted, and yet indispensable, it's always there when I need it. This was never more true than on a recent Sunday, when it seemed like a good idea to spend the day making apple butter and cinnamon swirl bread. I had no idea that I was embarking on a journey that would make Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy look like a day in the park.

I got up at 8 a.m., knowing that the slow-cooker apple butter recipe called for 10 hours of cooking time, followed by straining the concoction. "No problem!" I naively optimistically thought. "I can probably still be done by 7:30." On Saturday afternoon, I'd picked a bunch of apples from the two trees in our yard, feeling rather domestic-pioneer-y as I did so. I noticed there weren't many apples without souvenirs from bugs or birds, but figured it wouldn't be that hard to cut around them.

All Things Pumpkin

There's just something about pumpkin-centric baked treats. I think they're one of the main reasons I enjoy the holidays so much. That smell of fresh-baked pumpkiny goodness wafting through the house... mmmm.

Two nights ago, I made an awesome recipe that my mom gave me, for pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting. Haven't made a pumpkin pie yet this year, but that's really what got me into baking in the first place, learning from my grandmother how to make a pie-crust for a pumpkin pie. And some of my fondest holiday food memories involve my mom's awesome pumpkin bread recipe. I decided it was time to share these three favorite recipes.

So here you go, fellow pumpkin-dessert lover. Indulge and enjoy.


Pumpkin Bars with Cream-Cheese Frosting

2 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp powdered ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
4 eggs
1 c vegetable oil
2 c sugar
15 oz can pumpkin

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together the dry ingredients (except sugar). In a separate, large mixing bowl, mix the oil, eggs, sugar and pumpkin. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix well.

Pour batter into ungreased jelly roll pan (17 x 21 x 1) or a 9 x 13 cake pan. If using jelly roll pan, bake 15-20 minutes; if using cake pan, bake 25-30 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in pan before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz softened cream cheese
1/2 c softened butter
1 tsp vanilla
4 c powdered sugar

Combine butter, cream cheese and vanilla; add sugar while mixing; stir until frosting is smooth.

(I know, isn't it awful how easy it is to make? You gained 2 pounds just by reading the recipe. But it's sooooo good.)

Mom's Pumpkin Bread

3 c sugar - 1 1/2 c white, 1 1/2 c brown
1 c vegetable or canola oil
4 eggs
1/3 c water
2 c pumpkin (16 oz can)
3 1/3 c all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cloves
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 t ground ginger
1 Tbs cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix sugar, oil, eggs & water; beat well. Add pumpkin. Add dry ingredients and mix well.

Pour batter into 3 small greased loaf pans (not glass), 8.5 x 4.25 x 3". Bake for ~ 1 hour, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. If using Pyrex, bake 30-35 minutes. Turn loaf out of pan and let cool on wire rack.


Grandma's Pie Crust

2 crust pie:
2 c flour
1/4 c water
1 tsp salt
3/4 c shortening
1/3 c flour/salt to mix with water

1 crust pie:
1 1/2 c flour
1/2 c shortening
1/2 tsp salt
3-5 Tbs water

Sift flour & salt together. Take 1/4 c of flour/salt mixture and mix with 3 Tbs water (dry/high altitude climates, 4 Tbs). Add shortening to the dry flour-salt mixture and mix with a pastry blender; add in the wet flour-salt mixture and mix. (Use a light hand with delicate pastries like this, don't overmix.) Add a little more water as needed.

Roll out on a pastry cloth to a circle 9 inches, depending on the pie pan. To transfer to the pan, gently roll the pie-crust around the rolling-pin and quickly lift it over the pan, then pat down the crust, trim the edges and flute by pinching the edges.

Pumpkin Pie

1/8 tsp salt
2/3 c sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground/powdered ginger
1/8 tsp cloves
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 2/3 c milk
1 1/2 c pumpkin (1 can)

Beat eggs. Sift dry ingredients together and add to eggs.
Add milk & pumpkin.
Line piepan with crust and pour in filling. Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes (high altitude: 20 minutes). Reduce heat to 325 degrees (high altitude can do 350 degrees) and bake for 35+ minutes (high altitude: 45-60 minutes) until knife in center comes out clean. Let cool.

Makes one 9-inch pie.

Homemade Whipped Cream

Chill mixer paddles and mixing bowl in fridge for at least half an hour. Pour heavy whipping cream in bowl and beat with handheld mixer until growing stiff (forms soft peaks). Fold in white sugar and mix to taste, about 1/4 - 1/3 cup.

Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread

Prepare to succumb to total bliss. I adapted this recipe from several that I found on the Internet. If you're growing zucchini in your garden, this is the perfect recipe to use for those zucchinis you don't notice until they're ridiculously big.

Although this might look complicated to a novice baker, it's really quite an easy recipe; it just has a lot of ingredients to combine. Grating the zucchini can be a little time consuming, but the result is so well worth it.

I've also added a way to make this TRIPLE chocolate zucchini bread. Mmm... no no, you don't have to thank me. ;)

Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread

~ 1/2 lb or 2 c grated zucchini
4 c all-purpose flour
1/2 c cocoa
1 1/2 c sugar (1 c white, 1/2 c brown)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 1/2 c oil
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 c semisweet chocolate chips

For half of batter:
1/4 c toffee bits
1/4 c walnut pieces
1/2 c bittersweet chocolate chips (if you want triple chocolate zucchini bread - and who doesn't?!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (375 for high altitude). Butter two 8 x 4" loaf pans.

Grate zucchini. In large bowl, combine dry ingreedients.

In another bowl, combine zucchini with remaining ingredients except chocolate chips and optional stir-ins. Stir zucchini mixture into dry ingredients just until blended. Stir in chocolate chips, toffee and walnuts.

Pour batter into pans; bake until toothpick in center comes out clean, ~ 1 hour 15 minutes. Cool on rack 10 minutes, then remove from pan. Devour.

Mmmm... bread.

I just read this in an "On This Day" email, from May 29th:

Bread is a basic food made from a flour-and-water dough, normally with yeast, baked in an oven. No other food is as redolent of myth, rite, and tradition as bread. Central to meals until almost the end of the second millennium (more so than meat), it is indeed the 'staff of life.' Breadmaking dates back to at least 9000 BC; the first breads were cooked on heated bakestones, many of which survive. The invention of leavened bread (around 5000 BC) is attributed to the Egyptians, who made bread from millet and barley and may have discovered fermentation by chance when a piece of dough became sour. In the Middle Ages, the bakery trade developed in diversity and complexity. Part of the baker's art is the careful choice of ingredients and the manipulation of factors such as oven temperature, length of baking time, and humidity, all of which affect the crumb, thickness, and quality of bread crust.

I hadn't realized that bread dated back quite so far. I love bread, and it's so much fun to bake. The feeling of accomplishment when you pull out a yummy-smelling loaf of bread or some delectable-looking biscuits is tremendous... at least, for me - I suppose because baking always seemed so difficult to me before I started learning from Janet and Grandma.

Here's one of my favorite bread recipes - Irish soda bread. This recipe is adapted from the Moosewood Restaurant's Low-Fat Favorites cookbook and Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads.

Irish Soda Bread

1 1/2 c unbleached white flour
1 1/2 c whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 T packed brown sugar
4 T cold butter
1 egg
1 c buttermilk

Preheat oven to 375 deg. F. Lightly oil baking sheet. Mix dry ingredients. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender or using two knives.

In a separate bowl, mix wet ingredients. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, and pour the wet mixture into the well. Stir until evenly moist.

Turn onto lightly floured surface, kneading just a little. Mound on baking sheet into ~ 9" domed loaf. Lightly cut an X in the top with a sharp knife. Bake ~ 45 minutes.